SLO # 1: Apply knowledge of multicultural, ethical, and legal issues pertaining to using educational technologies and communication within the global community.
Assignment # 1
ETEC 525 asked us to examine impact of technology on our modern society. While there are many obvious benefits, our usage of digital technology is changing how we access information, how we communicate, and even how we think. In the following presentation, my partners and I examine the book "Amused to Death" by Neil Postman, where he supports his opinion that television's emphasis on entertainment over content is undermining our abilities to think deeply and rationally.
Assignment # 2
In ED P 595, we learned how about qualitative research by doing qualitative research. I chose to do my project on the availability of programming about technology at the public libraries near my house because I had previously noticed a large disparity in what got offered to whom and at which libraries. For my research, I interviewed librarians who made programming decisions at their librarians to get their opinions on what might causing the differences in access.
Reflection
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If I'm honest, we picked "Amused to Death" to present because it was the shortest of the options available. Initially, I had my doubts about slogging through Postman's book because, too often, "it's making us stupid" is just nervous hand-wringing over anything new. However, his argument that the medium becomes the message was thought-provoking. When politicians are more interested in a memorable sound-bite than an effective legislative platform, who or what are we really electing? What could have been another editorial about MTV shortening our attention spans turned out to be an insightful look into how the need to be entertaining was permeating every aspect of the #1 way people got their information in the 1980s. Now that we have moved from TV to social media platforms like Twitter, how has our new medium started affecting our message? It was an important and interesting talk to prepare and give because, as Postman says, new technology and media can be wonderful but we need to be cognizant of how it changes our conversations and even our ability to have certain conversations.
Reflection
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Before joining the ETEC program, I agreed with the commonly held belief that everyone has cellphones and therefore, technology has ubiquitously opened up access for everyone. However, once we started discussing the digital divide, I started seeing examples of it everywhere. This research project let me investigate an issue in my own neighborhood that had been bothering me for a while. Even though I don't see an easy solution to the challenges the librarians discussed, I think it's important for communities to understand why certain resources and activities are or are not available at their local branch.
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Interestingly, whenever I mentioned this project to other librarians, they immediately explained to me what was making technology programming difficult -- but not ONE of them gave me the same reason.
Course Reflection: ETEC 525 & ED P 595
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Both of these courses helped me to think more deeply about the effects technology is having on our society and who is being affected the most and who might be being left behind. I think there are big gaps in what we talk about when we talk about technology and how we talk about technology. When I interviewed librarians, I met some who were excited about programmable robots and 3D printers and others who thought children already had WAY too much screen time so libraries shouldn't emphasize technology at all. What different perspectives on the word "technology"! We need to be having these conversations at a higher level, not just in classes or schools or libraries.
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SLO # 2: Synthesize leadership principles within the practice of information and educational technology.
Assignment # 1
In ETEC 530, we studied different philosophies of leadership and how those can influence the decisions we, as educators, make, both large scale and day-to-day. In the following presentation, my partner and I looked specifically at policies for technology planning and shared expert advice with our classmates, while giving them opportunity to role play putting that advice into action.
Reflection
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The hardest part of this presentation was making it general enough to interest our entire audience -- not every person in ETEC 530 is going to be heading a technology planning committee. We tried to distill all of the data and advice given in the source material into what was most broad and basic, so that it could be used as a frame-work for future planners but also help non-planners understand the challenges behind making technology decisions. While not everyone at a school chooses the technology, everyone is affected by those choices.
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We also tried to demonstrate handy ways to get audience input and work collaboratively. Slido lets you quickly give polls with a variety of question types. While it was fun to try out, the mechanism for switching between polls and slides was clunky and better suited for getting feedback at the end of a presentation than making a presentation interactive. Padlet, a collaborative pin-board where group members can edit, add, and comment, proved a good tool for analyzing our planning case studies -- students could independently add comments while they read the case studies and then come together to discuss and answer our reflection questions.
Assignment # 2
To demonstrate our abilities to apply the leadership philosophies examined in ETEC 530, we put them to use in planning an initiative for our own schools. Because I was not currently working at a school when I took ETEC 530, I created a fantasy technology initiative for my neighboring town.
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Reflection
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This project was fun because I wasn't constrained by any real-world parameters and I could basically do whatever I wanted. Of course, that does mean my plan is a little unrealistic. Programs where teenagers help senior citizens learn technology skills are common-place; we have one at my local library. However, it must take a lot of buy-in with students to have a long-running, consistent program. The high school here requires students to perform community service every year so many students are looking for convenient opportunities to earn hours. While my plan attempts to create incentives for students to stay active in the program, it's hard to predict how effective they would be. Furthermore, convincing the community stakeholders I suggested to actually provide the supports necessary could be challenging. I have never worked with any of the organizations listed in my plan.
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Course Reflection: ETEC 530
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Much of 530 was discussing readings about leadership, its challenges, and what it takes to be a good leader. I learned a lot from the unique experiences of my classmates, who came from a variety of backgrounds and employment. My favorite part of the class, however, was our guest speakers who were in leadership positions and shared what they thought it took to be a good leader. I think it is easy to know what qualities one looks for in a boss, but it was very interesting to hear what it took to embody those traits. For example, one speaker talked about the ability to recognize when someone is resistant to a new idea, criticizing a new idea, and giving constructive feedback about an idea. All of these reactions to change require a different response and this corresponds to our desire for leaders who can create environments where we feel heard, supported, encouraged.
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SLO # 3: Apply instructional design principles to locate, evaluate and develop instructional materials.
Assignment # 1
ETEC 570 challenged us to create one unit of an online or hybrid course, using materials we found or developed ourselves. My unit was on meteorology and in this assignment, I located three different online tours of weather stations and incorporated them into a sample lesson.
Reflection
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It was so challenging finding virtual tours for science. I do think the options I ended up choosing are useful and that students would get something educational by looking through them but they don't have the pizazz that "walking" through the Louvre would have. This assignment made me wish I could suggest resources to the internet and have them appear. While there are many online opportunities that teachers could just create themselves, a virtual tour seems like a unique challenge.
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Doing this assignment also made me realize that there are many educational resources that are presented "as is" that take a lot of effort to incorporate into an actual classroom lesson. While novelty and fun have their place in school, it would take some careful planning to incorporate some of the more showy activities advertised to teachers. I couldn't just send the link to these weather station tours to students and expect that they would come away with anything useful without giving them some direction in how to engage.
Assignment # 2
As part of the weather unit, students learn that air and water currents are formed due to heat being transferred between molecules and affecting their movements. As an introduction to this section on currents, I created this video reviewing the different types of heat transfer.
Reflection
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This video definitely has a couple issues that I would fix, especially after rewatching it while making my portfolio. Because I was nervous, I misspoke a couple of times and rambled quite a bit. There was also some dead screen time, where I was talking but nothing visual was happening.
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But, having taken online courses myself, I think these introductory videos have a lot of value. They remind students that there is a human instructor somewhere and that they aren't experiencing the course in a vacuum. Sometimes, little missteps make a video feel like it's live (although, if I were "reteaching" this course, I would not leave in mistakes for a "live feel"). And, hearing something slightly complicated being explained in simple terms can help it make more sense than just reading text alone.
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Making this video was a useful experience for me because every little element, from remembering what I wanted to say to changing tabs efficiently, can make having a smoothly flowing video quite challenging, more so than I had anticipated.
Course Reflection: ETEC 570
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This class and ETEC 551 were interesting opportunities to try making different educational materials. Not everything that we tried were things that I would incorporate into a class, either as something to have students try or to use to make my own course materials. But I think it's valuable to have had that experience, nonetheless. I also found it really helpful to hear from classmates about what kinds of materials and tools they were finding and what things they enjoyed using with their students. I think I learned a great deal from what other students had to share during our discussions.
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SLO # 4: Integrate theoretical perspectives to review, interpret, and apply research in learning technologies.
Assignment # 1
To help us get more used to using research, ETEC 510 had us read, analyze, critique, and explain journal articles. In this assignment, I critique an article on the effectiveness of a new math-learning tool based on criteria talked about in class.
Reflection
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I tend to take things at face value -- if a researcher says this is what the results of their study means, then those results must mean that. Practicing thinking critically about articles was very helpful because it both gave me examples of things to look for and convinced me that just about every article has something to critique about it. Even when research makes good, valid points, it's important to notice any flawed assumptions or reasons the research might not be extendable to other situations.
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Assignment # 2
To help us practice analyzing research, we made literature reviews based around an educational research question. I searched for research on educational games and how helpful they actually are in motivating students to engage or in improving student performance or understanding
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Reflection
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I was surprised by how little literature there was on this topic, considering how many gaming platforms are claiming to be educational and to be helping students learn better. I think this just shows that educational research is hard to conduct. For educational games, how do we want to test that they're better? There are so many options: are students more engaged for a single session, do student scores improve after the game is introduced, do students feel less motivated in classes with no games once they've had games? How do you compare a game like Kahoot! with classroom management systems that are built with game-like mechanics? Before doing this assignment, I hadn't realized the magnitude of answers that would need to be answered before conducting official, academic research.
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This also makes me think that it's very important for educators to take the time to conduct their own research and reflect on their own practices. They are the only ones who really understand the improvements they're hoping to see in their students.
Course Reflection: ETEC 510
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This class's emphasis on reviewing research and theory helped put all of the courses I took in the ETEC program in perspective. So much of what is written about technology is opinion pieces and anecdotal; it's important to go back to the research and track the sources. I also appreciated the idea that many of issues in educational technology don't have easy, straightforward answers. So often, we get convinced of one way of thinking but that doesn't mean there aren't a lot of valid points on the other side. The case studies and ethics work we did was really valuable in broadening my perspectives.
SLO # 5: Demonstrate effective written, electronic, and oral communications that reflect critical thinking and information literacy.
Assignment # 1
ETEC 523 looked at the different ways we access and share information, which is important for communication well. As part of the class, we made a practice professional development video, where we taught our classmates something new about technology.
Reflection
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CSS was a challenging topic to make a professional development video for because I didn't know anything about my intended audience and what they might already know about making websites and programming. I decided to make an introductory video explaining what CSS is for, instead of a tutorial showing how to use CSS. Even then, how do you explain the benefits of using CSS to viewers who may not understand the challenges CSS attempts to address? This was a helpful exercise because knowing your audience and how best to reach them is obviously an important part of communicating well.
Assignment # 2
We also practiced making informative and clear infographics.​
Reflection
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I had never used Canva before, which is an online tool for making well-designed posters and presentations, but now I use it quite a lot to make announcements at work -- all thanks to this project! As busy professionals, and not professional designers, having one tool that provides templates, simple color palettes, and galleries of fair-use images is really convenient and cuts out a lot of the work behind making attractive advertising around the library.
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Course Reflection: ETEC 523
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ETEC 523 was a very interesting look at how we gather and share information, from defining the symbols that help us represent abstract ideas to how big a difference time and research can make in news reporting. More than any other ETEC course, 523 made me re-evaluate my personal habits in how I consume information: do I get caught up in the 24-hr news cycle or do I wait a bit until more facts have been released? Am I actually looking at the sources cited or do I take the headline at face value? It is important for students to learn to ask these kinds of questions and to have a healthy skepticism for what they see online.
SLO # 6: Design, develop, implement, and assess learning experiences.
Assignment # 1
For ETEC 551, we had the opportunity to compare and assess many different online resources, including learning experiences that are already available and tools to help us create new ones. In this assignment, I was able to try out an online course and evaluate it against the principles of design we discussed in class.
Reflection
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This assignment was a handy way to reinforce why the design principles we learned in class work. I think I would have found it difficult to explain why I didn't find this online astronomy course as interesting as I had expected to before taking ETEC 551. While phrases like "boring" and "too much reading" come easily, it is harder to define what exactly was wrong and what might have made it more interesting or fun to take.
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Having to take online courses definitely helps one understand what makes for a good online course. I think every teacher about to create or take over an online curriculum should definitely experience a couple first hand so they can be more sympathetic to what their students are about to go through.
Assignment # 2
We also implemented what we learned about creating learning experiences by making our own. While not the most educational, my partner and I envisioned a YouTube channel where we talked about food and movies from our different cultures -- I am European-American and she is from China. If this channel were real, hopefully it would allow students to share things they enjoy from their own cultures.
Reflection
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We had so many technical difficulties doing this project: the room had surprisingly bad acoustics, we couldn't figure out how to actually livestream ourselves, and the table setup made using my webcam awkward. But, these are only things you find out in the moment -- you don't know the room echoes when you've never been in it empty, who knew the huge play button didn't actually start the broadcast, and school furniture is what it is.
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That said, it was super fun and easy to plan making this video together. Using YouTube channels and live broadcasts could easily be an assignment for students or a way to get discussions going around campus.
Course Reflection: ETEC 551
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While evaluating different kinds of media creation tools from a user's perspective was helpful, I found our discussions about how students could make use of these tools more helpful than thinking about using them as a teacher. For example, I would be much less likely to assign students to watch videos of me than I would be to assign students to make videos. There are many tools from this class that I would share with students, such as collaborating through a wiki tool, creating images and videos to demonstrate mastery through easy-to-learn tools like Adobe Spark, and using a website designer to showcase work in an online portfolio.
SLO # 7: Promote reading for learning, personal growth and enjoyment.
Assignment # 1
ETEC 545 looked in depth at literacy for child and young adults, including how to get students excited about reading, how to choose quality books for a collection, and how to advertise books to students. In this assignment, we created biographies of famous authors using a graphic novel style to attract younger readers.
Reflection
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Creating a biography as a graphic novel was challenging: the genre does not want a lot of text but, when you're not an artist, what else can you use? But it was a worthwhile exercise because I had to struggle to decide what was most interesting about Ms. L'Engle and what was most valuable to share with students. In this case, I thought students would relate most to her thoughts about being a free-thinker and not being afraid to ask tough questions.
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Making comic books like this would also be a good assignment for students. Taking a large amount of information and figuring out what is the most useful is a hard, but important, skill to gain. Also, having students create introductions to new books and new authors would be more enticing to their peers than what some adult thinks. Plus, being able share what you like with others and knowing that other people care about your thoughts and opinions on books would be very encouraging for students to keep on reading.
Assignment # 2
We also had example library posters to suggest ​books to students. Having done so much research on Madeleine L'Engle, I decided to make a poster about what to read when you've finished A Wrinkle in Time.
Reflection
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I read a lot as a child (and still do) so this assignment was a breeze for me. (I really do recommend all these books!) I decided to theme my recommendations because books can appeal to different children for different reasons. If I did this assignment again, I would try to pick some more recent novels. Except for Theodosia and the Serpents of Chaos, I don't think any of my recommendations were published in this century. Not that there is anything wrong with classics.
Course Reflection: ETEC 545
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I have heard grumblings about the amount of reading required for this course but I absolutely loved it. For our weekly book reviews of children's and YA books in different genres, I pushed myself to read books outside my comfort zone and found some new favorites. I got to dive into my personal reading lists and think deeply about what types of books I lean towards and how that might bias, unintentionally, books I might pick for future collections. Our discussions about how we classify and organize books and media were eye-opening. While we all probably have an inherent understanding of what science fiction or historical fiction, it can get sticky when you actually try to define it and group books, which is an issue I had never run into before.
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SLO # 8: Organize collections according to standard library cataloging and classification principles.
Assignment # 1
In ETEC 540, we learned about how collections get organized at libraries and why. To do that, we looked at the types of cataloging systems available, visited local libraries, and practiced cataloging books ourselves. Here is my practice catalog.
Reflection
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I had a tough time with this assignment. Even the most standard library media, like the novel, can be very difficult to classify, especially when you're confined by predetermined categories that may or may not quite fit. I get very uncomfortable with those kinds of grey areas. However, it was a valuable experience because after doing my 10 practices records, I felt more confident that I would get quicker at making those trickier calls. It also helped me appreciate why some books at my local library show up with very strange subjects in the online catalog.
Assignment # 2
To understand better how cataloging and classification happens in the field, we interviewed staff at local school libraries to see how they organize their collections and spaces. Here is my evaluation based on my interview at a middle school library.
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Reflection
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It is always fun to take a peek behind the curtain. I was working as a long-term substitute in the science department at this middle school when I interviewed the librarian and I had had very different experiences with the district level staff than what she talked about.
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This was a helpful assignment, not only because it gave me an excuse to hang around the school library more, but also because it was refreshing to just watch a very simple library in action. Even though it wasn't perfect, it was well used and well appreciated by the students. It is easy to get caught up in overly-stressing about the latest technology, best practices, etc. but sometimes caring deeply about your students and making something as useable as possible is enough. Not that we don't have wishlists of resources we'd like to have and programming we'd like to try.
Course Reflection: ETEC 540
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Since I joined the ETEC program because I was interested in becoming a school librarian, I appreciated the hands-on opportunities afforded by ETEC 540. Making catalog records, repairing books, comparing the benefits of different library management systems were all new experiences for me, even though I have volunteered at and visited libraries my whole life. I definitely would prefer to use a library management system that pre-makes MARC records for you, instead of having to make them myself.